Books What Are You Reading or Listening To?

[Chairslinger]

Anyone else do the Goodreads challenge?

 

I whiffed pretty good on mine. 18 out of 100  

 

Despite having more free time from the pandemic I just got engrossed with other things in the middle of the year.

 

 

Edit: Just set a more modest goal of 52 for this year. Hope it turns out better than the last

[CastlevaniaNut18]

2 hours ago, Chairslinger said:

Anyone else do the Goodreads challenge?

 

I whiffed pretty good on mine. 18 out of 100  

 

Despite having more free time from the pandemic I just got engrossed with other things in the middle of the year.

 

 

Edit: Just set a more modest goal of 52 for this year. Hope it turns out better than the last

I do. Just for fun. 100/55 for 2020. 
 

I don’t know that I’ll read that much this year, so I set my goal to 65 just to start off. 
 

Starting off the year with Sword of Kings by Bernard Cornwell. I want to wrap up this excellent series. 

[EternallDarkness]

7 hours ago, Chairslinger said:

Anyone else do the Goodreads challenge?

 

I whiffed pretty good on mine. 18 out of 100  

 

Despite having more free time from the pandemic I just got engrossed with other things in the middle of the year.

 

 

Edit: Just set a more modest goal of 52 for this year. Hope it turns out better than the last

 

I always set it for 50, but typically exceed it easily, best year I think I was at 360% of goal, so like 160 books. 

 

 

Just finished up The Roach and holy crap was it good. Now starting on The Last Hunter series by Jeremy Robinson. 

[gamer.tv]

So, I have a good 7 books or so that I have available to read at the moment. After reading Troy however, I’ve decided to buy Homer’s Odyssey to read the first great work of Western writing - so that’s something.

 

I was also impressed my Father in Law was reading a 1200 page Proust novel, so to compete I’ve bought War and Peace, which I didn’t realise was 1700+ pages.

 

So that’ll be interesting to see if I can finish it, or you know, read it in general. 

[thewhyteboar]

17 hours ago, gamer.tv said:

So, I have a good 7 books or so that I have available to read at the moment. After reading Troy however, I’ve decided to buy Homer’s Odyssey to read the first great work of Western writing - so that’s something.

 

I was also impressed my Father in Law was reading a 1200 page Proust novel, so to compete I’ve bought War and Peace, which I didn’t realise was 1700+ pages.

 

So that’ll be interesting to see if I can finish it, or you know, read it in general. 

What translation?

[gamer.tv]

1 hour ago, thewhyteboar said:

What translation?

E.V Rieu for Penguin.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

First book completed for 2021. I started Know My Name by Chanel Miller for my nonfiction. I'm about to start The Stand by Stephen King. It's finally time.

[TheLeon]

I finished The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune. It is an extremely sweet, charming, fun read. It’s message of acceptance is delivered with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, but the overwhelming earnestness of it worked for me. 

[Nokra]

On 1/1/2021 at 10:54 AM, Chairslinger said:

Anyone else do the Goodreads challenge?

 

I whiffed pretty good on mine. 18 out of 100  

 

Despite having more free time from the pandemic I just got engrossed with other things in the middle of the year.

 

 

Edit: Just set a more modest goal of 52 for this year. Hope it turns out better than the last

I set mine for just 12 books in 2020 and I failed even that, reading only 10 all year.

 

In my defense, I did move back to the US and completed a master's thesis, but it still shames me as the lowest number of books I've read in a year over the last five years. 

[Chairslinger]

On 1/4/2021 at 2:39 AM, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

First book completed for 2021. I started Know My Name by Chanel Miller for my nonfiction. I'm about to start The Stand by Stephen King. It's finally time.

 

 

Since you had mixed feelings about IT I can't guarantee you'll love it, but it really is King's masterpiece. 

 

 

Just now, Nokra said:

I set mine for just 12 books in 2020 and I failed even that, reading only 10 all year.

 

In my defense, I did move back to the US and completed a master's thesis, but it still shames me as the lowest number of books I've read in a year over the last five years. 

 

 

Yeah, that's a pretty good excuse

 

My only excuse is that I tend to read pretty beefy books, so they take a while get through. But mostly I just dropped the ball during the middle of the year...

 

 

Already almost done with The Name of the Wind. Started out a bit rocky, but I've been enjoying it.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

6 minutes ago, Chairslinger said:

 

 

Since you had mixed feelings about IT I can't guarantee you'll love it, but it really is King's masterpiece. 

 

 

I liked IT. It just felt overly long and parts of it I struggled to pay attention. But overall, I really did like the book. Just wasn’t my favorite from King. 
 

So far, my favorites have been Pet Sematary, Misery, and The Shining. 
 

I'm super early in The Stand, like 85 pages, but the sense of dread I’m feeling as the virus spreads feels amplified by current events. My biggest concern now is keeping up with all these characters. Holy shit. 

[Bloodporne]

Spiral by Koji Suzuki

 

The second book after Ring. Finally got around to this after many years of enjoying Ring a lot. Not sure how I feel about it yet.

[EternallDarkness]

blasted through the 5 books in The Last Hunter series. Have a number of books I am slowly working through and plan to start The Rules of Supervillainy tomorrow

[TheLeon]

I just finished The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. I have to read more Le Carré now. 

[gamer.tv]

4 hours ago, TheLeon said:

I just finished The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. I have to read more Le Carré now. 

My father in law let me borrow that book and it is indeed awesome. 
 

just finished Warriors of the Storm and after deciding both Odyssey and War and Peace will be my summer books I’m deciding between Flame Bearer or something else from my bookshelf.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

It's been a slow start to the year for me. I reached book 2 in The Stand last night, really enjoying. Lot of characters introduced, but they're starting to come together. I'm also still working on Know My Name, for some reason, it's not grabbing me. I'm close to done, though, and I'll likely finish this weekend.

 

I think I'm going to take a short break from The Stand and read the new release by Angie Thomas, Concrete Rose. I adored her other two books and they were really fast reads, so this one should be too.

[thewhyteboar]

I finally started Young Men and Fire. It's been on my list for forever, so I'm excited to get to it.

[Dre801]

Red War - one of the Mitch Rapp novels.  RIP, Vince Flynn.  That said, Kyle Mills has done a good job taking over the series to keep it going.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

Approaching the halfway point in The Stand. Still really enjoying it.

 

For my nonfiction, I started Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough. I have several books on Theodore Roosevelt, figured I needed to get around to another one.

[EternallDarkness]

finished up Apocalypse Machine this afternoon, my 13th book for the year  oddly enough I am now workin on the book Knights of the Apocalypse. It has nothing to do with Apoc machine book, Knights is the 2nd book in a humor series dealing with life after the end of the world. 

[CitizenVectron]

Looks like I read 18 books in 2020. Not great, but not bad. So far this year I've finished Warbreak by Brandon Sanderson, and have started book 4 of the Stormlight Archive: Rhythm of War. Clocks in at 460,000 words...so might take a bit.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

Down to the last 300 pages in The Stand. This has been a really great time.

 

My current nonfiction is Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope by Nicholas D. Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn.

[Chris-]

I am reading 'Republic of Lies' by Anna Merlan.

 

[Chairslinger]

On 12/30/2020 at 10:02 PM, CitizenVectron said:

 

I've only read Mistborn trilogy, the first three Stormlight, and now Warbreaker (Stormlight 4 is next). I like them though!

 

I haven't read The Doors of Stone (book 2 of Kingkiller Chronicles by Rothfuss), unfortunately, I am afraid of the drop in quality. His editor commented this past spring that he hasn't seen a single chapter from Rothfuss in something like 2-3 years, and believes he's stopped writing altogether. Will be interesting to see what kind of contract he's bound to. It's been 9 years and there's nothing to show for it.

 

 

I made it through The Name of The Wind pretty quick and enjoyed it enough to go right into and through Wise Man's Fear. I don't think the drop off in quality was huge, but I can see why some people thought so. It gets a bit meandering with the last half of the book feeling almost like a collection of short stories rather than a cohesive book.

While the popular speculation is about whether book 3 will ever happen, I am left to wonder if it ever does how he will wrap things up in just one book. It's a weird story he's telling that sometimes seems confused whether it wants to be a small(ish) trilogy or a grand epic. 

 

I have seen recent videos of Rothfuss actually talking about book three, so it seems I might have jumped on board at the right time. But yeah, the guy makes Martin look like Sanderson by comparison. He talks about finishing the series like a 'Nam flashback. I don't mean to make fun of the guy, because there appears to be a legitimate anxiety disorder going on(and I think if I were writing a Fantasy series that somewhat unexpectedly exploded in popularity before I could finish it I might be more Rothfuss than Sanderson myself) but it's just a little crazy how he's like a startled deer when a fan even mentions the books.

 

 

Anyway, I finished those two books in a pretty short time, about halfway through January in just about a week's time, I think. Despite initially considering starting Stormlight afterwards I changed my mind when I went on Amazon to look at the books. I am now kind of wanting to wait until Rhythm of War comes out in paperback and maybe I can get a boxed set of 4. I considered trying to get through ASoIaF again, as I only finished book 1 years ago.

 

Ultimately  I decided to give the Belgariad another try. I got through the first 2 of the 5 books years ago, and just couldn't get into it. I reread the first two, and just made it through the third. After finishing the third, I think these books were definitely a product of their time as far as publishing goes. All under the 150,000 word mark, and the first three substantially so. If you go to buy them nowadays the most readily available versions seems to be compilations that merge the first three books into a book and the last two. And that kind of feels like they should have originally been published. Not sure how the last two will fair together, but after having read the first three it feels like in terms of modern Fantasy it could have been published as a single, large 350,000 word story. After reading the first two I was left with the impression that it was a very shallow adventure Fantasy story. While I am still not seeing complexity on the level of something like Wheel of Time, the story seemed to open up a bit. 

[EternallDarkness]

1 hour ago, Chairslinger said:

While the popular speculation is about whether book 3 will ever happen, I am left to wonder if it ever does how he will wrap things up in just one book.

 

 

it won't it will wrap up the intro to a longer story 

[gamer.tv]

Currently reading Orchestra of Minorities as my grown up book and the first Series of Unfortunate Events as my children’s book. Both are enjoyable (the former much more so than the name implies) 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

I decided to power through and finish The Stand before going back to work. Holy shit, that was amazing. Some top tier SK right there. Took me right at 4 weeks to get through it, so not too bad. I really enjoyed the character development and honestly, I liked the ending, which is always something SK struggles with. I'm glad I finally got around to this.

 

I do think I'm gonna read some shorter books for a bit, though. Need to whittle down my TBR shelf. My planned next fiction will be War Lord. Gotta wrap up the Saxon Tales. I think I want to finish Tightrope first, though.

[EternallDarkness]

4 hours ago, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

 I liked the ending, which is always something SK struggles with.

 

quite true

[EternallDarkness]

Reading Project Nemesis by Jeremy Robinson as well as an advance copy of Harmon Cooper's new book Cowboy Necromancer, as well as listening to an advance copy of Rule of Cool by Mathew Siege, read by Felicia Day  

[Dre801]

Bitcoin for Dummies.

[gamer.tv]

On 2/2/2021 at 2:25 PM, EternallDarkness said:

 

quite true

It’s this sentiment that makes a good SK book with a poor ending such a frustration as it’s in the lineage - but maybe not in his short term gain.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

Finished Tightrope, now starting War Lord by Bernard Cornwell. Time to say goodbye to Uhtred. 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

Done with War Lord. That was a good ending to what has become one of my favorite series. 
 

I'm going to start The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton today. It’s a memoir of a guy who was wrongfully convicted of murder and spent almost 30 years on death row before being exonerated. 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

The Sun Does Shine should be read by everyone. It’s that essential. If you’re pro-death penalty and this book doesn’t make you reconsider your stance, then you have no moral compass. 
 

 

Now reading The Push by Ashley Audrain. Definitely not my typical read, but I’d seen so much hype over it that I was curious. It has my attention. 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

The Push was quite disturbing. But good. Now moving on to All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Brynn Greenwood. I’m gonna need to up my lexapro dose when I’m done with these messed up reads.